Dadaism: Hannah Hochs and the Dada Movement - Research Paper Example

Dadaism – Feminist or not? A Case Study of Hannah Hochs and the Dada Movement There is a definite bias in the Dada Movement towards male artists, abias that has been perpetuated by the male Dada artists themselves, along with the times in which the Dada artists lived. In fact, there has been a dearth of great female artists in any movement, a fact that was noted by Linda Nochlin in 1971. (Jones, 2003, p. 293). This dearth of female influence is felt throughout the Dada movement, as the male artists have ignored the female artists, by and large, in their memoirs and autobiographies, and the female artists have not written their own side of the story to defend their own prominence in the movement. (Hemus, 2009, p. 3). The women of Dada are treated as footnotes in the historical biography of the movement, as the movement is narrated through the eyes of the Dada men, such as Hugo Ball, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, Hans Richter and Tristan Tzara, each of whom wrote memoirs that mentioned the women of Dada only in passing. Moreover, the women have gotten attention mainly through their relationships with male Dada artists, such as Suzanne Duchamp was known as the sister of three male artists and the wife of another, with little attention given to her own accomplishments. (Hemus, 2009, p. 3). It is through this prism that the question of the feminist aspects of Dadaism must be examined. In particular, the feminism presented by one Dada artist, Hannah Hochs will be examined in relation to the overall Dada movement, with specific focus on the Berlin Dadaists, the group in which Hochs resided. Background of the Dada movement and Its Relation to Feminism Dadaism as a whole sprung up during the post World War I period, a time when womens rights such as suffrage, working status and birth control were just coming to the fore in politics around the world. As the Dada movement was hostile towards institutions that were seen as of the past, it would be natural for the movement to embrace these wholesale changes in the lives of women. (Hemus, 2009, p. 6). During this period of time, the “New Woman” came to the fore. This is a woman who was not as concerned with being a mother and staying home with children, but had a job – “working on the assembly line, typing at secretarial jobs, using modern household appliance, or posing like mannequins in advertisements.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 2). Mass culture reflected the changing roles of woman, and the anxieties, desires, fears and hopes that are related to the rapidly transforming female identities. German women got the right to vote in 1918 and the right to run for office in 1919. That society was still not entirely comfortable with the changes shows in a 1919 picture of two sisters who were representatives to the National Assembly. They stand in the snow, looking cold and uncomfortable, perhaps symbolic of the reception that they were receiving from society at the time. (Lavin, 1993, p. 3). The movement, as well as the changing times, presumably provided opportunities for women to become prominent. Dada operated outside of the mainstream, eschewing major publishers and gallery owners, instead displaying their art through their own showcases, and the publicity of these exhibits relied upon the Dada artists themselves, as opposed to other forms of publicity. Because of this self-containment, combined with the increased global consciousness of womens rights, women has “unprecedented opportunities” within the Dada world. These opportunities presented themselves in the pragmatic aspects, such as spaces in which to create, perform, publish and exhibit; and in the aesthetic aspects, as the realm of acceptable subject matter for artistic concern was broadened. (Hemus, 2009, p. 7). However, despite these factors and despite the fact that women had more opportunity to participate in the arts in general, due to an increase of education and training available to them, and also due to a change in public policy towards them, women still had many complex barriers that hindered their success. These hindrances included a lack of funds and a dearth of suitable workplaces and societal pressure on women to lead “respectable” lives and attend to their families. (Hemus, 2009, p. 7). At the same time, womens art work did not get enough critical attention and was more likely to be censured than male work. That Dadaism was on the fringes of the mainstream and represented avant-garde sensibilities, which opened up the men to ridicule, let alone the women, compounded the problem for women. The Work of Hannah Hoch It is in this backdrop that Hannah Hoch came to prominence. Her initial link to Dadaism was through her relationship with Raoul Hausmann, a male Dadasoph, a relationship that lasted seven years, between the years 1915 and 1922, while Hausmann was married with a child. (Hemus, 2009, p. 91). Indeed, that relationship was complicated, as shown by his own negligence regarding giving Hoch credit for her role in the Dada movement, stating in his own memoirs, that Hoch was “never a member of the Club.” (Hemus, 2009, p. 92). The medium that was pioneered by Hoch and Hausmann was that of photomontage, which is just as it sounds – pasting together different photographs to form a coherent whole. Although Hoch attributed this idea to Hausmann, she also admitted that this was a technique that she used as a child - “Already as a child I knew this technique. There were, e.g., jokey postcards, contrived by sticking together photo-bits of comical situations. Or wedding couples, who were confronted with the future joys and sorrows of marriage. And suchlike.” (Hemus, 2009, p. 96). It was through this technique that Hoch made her artistic statement that often echoed feminist themes. For instance, a self-portrait of Hoch in 1919, a double-exposure print in which the foreground is a blurry Hoch and the background is Hausmann, states everything that needs to be known about her relationship with Hausmann. In the print, the two are entertwined, although, perhaps tellingly, Hausmann is only a partial figure subsumed by Hoch. Hoch, in the foreground of this photograph has a slightly defiant expression, her eyebrows arched, her eyes staring straight ahead her left hand prominent in the lower-left hand corner of the print, while Hausmann has a slight smirk on his visage in the background. (Hemus, 2009, p. 90). This photo suggests that Hoch, while dominated by Hausmann in her personal and professional life, still felt a defiance in her relationship with him, perhaps because he refused to leave his family for her, and she recognized a need to put him into the background of her life. This print shows Hoch to be her own person, outside of her relationship with Hausmann, a feminist perspective for a woman to take in an era when women were still supposed to be subservient to their men and family. Mutter: Aus einem ethnographischen museum Beyond the personal, Hoch also displayed a decidedly feminist bent to her works, a bent that commented on the conditions of the modern woman. For instance, the work Mutter: Aus einem ethnographischen Museum (Mother: From an Ethnographic Museum) was a direct commentary on the illegality of abortion. (Sawelson-Gorse, 1998, p. 332). The original picture was of a woman who decidedly proletariat, and also decidedly unhappy. Her posture is slumped, she looks at the camera with an expression of abject misery, her big brown eyes filled with sorrow, her posture indicating exhaustion and despair. This is the woman for whom unwanted pregnancies and births was especially cruel, as her poverty made the prospect of bringing more mouths to feed into the world daunting. The picture itself, without any embellishments, would speak to the cruelty of illegal abortions. Hoch, however, turned the picture into direct commentary on the need to legalize abortion. This is in keeping with Hochs personal politics – she had two illegal abortions, one of which was a child that was conceived during her relationship with Hausmann, and Hoch worked to overturn Paragraph 218, a paragraph that outlawed abortion in Weimar Germany. (Sawelson-Gorse, 1998, p. 331). Mutter was Hochs response to this paragraph. In Mutter, Hoch covered the face of the dejected pregnant woman with a tribal mask. This allegorically aligned the mother with primitive art, perhaps to protest how primitive and backwards it was to make abortion illegal. One of the eyes of the mask is a modern female eye, which “perhaps allud[ed] to a kind of universal femininity.” (Sawelson-Gorse, 1998, p. 331). The mask itself obscured the identity of the pregnant woman, which shows that the woman is somehow non-descript, forgotten and anonymous, hidden from the general society who chooses not to see her plight, and by the politicians who do not consider her when making their laws. At the same time, she becomes an “Other” - not a part of society, nor a woman, but a gross caricature. (Sawelson-Gorse, 1998, p. 331). Dada-Ernst Another Hoch work, Dada-Ernst, a 1920-1921 montage, demonstrated the conflicts that modern Weimar women faced. (Lavin, 1993, p. 7). The montage is dominated by two gigantic, disembodied female legs with a mans single eye connecting the two legs, where the pubic region would have been. This suggests any number of things. First, the legs do not belong to a body, but are free-standing. This perhaps shows that women are literally cut off at the hips. To cut off a person means to make them less than human, such as what a serial killer would do with a female body. The killer sees the woman as less than human, as less than an animal, therefore it is acceptable to cut her into pieces. Perhaps this is what is being suggested by the disembodied legs. The legs are also vaguely sexual, although it would be much more so if the legs had on high heels, which they did not, as they were barefoot. Still, there is a vaguely sexual connotation to the legs – such as when men treat womens body parts as sexual objects, professing to be a “leg man” or a “breast man”, as if a woman could be reduced to a sum of these parts. It is also vaguely sexist for the same reason. When a woman is not seen as a whole, but as a sum of her parts, then that woman is not taken seriously and is not seen as a whole person but a sex object. The legs are something that a man can play with, much like breasts, and, because they are disembodied, they ultimately represent the mentality that women are sex objects and nothing more. The sexuality and woman-as-playtoy theme is strengthened by the mans eye right where the womans pubic bone would be. The eye is right in the womans crotch, which suggests leering. At the same time, the eye connects the legs, which would suggest the idea that women are defined by men, that without men there would be no connection between women and society. There would be no connection between the legs themselves either. The violence of the disembodied legs, as suggested above by the example of the serial killer, is heightened by the presence of two gold coins. These coins resemble “a large bowlike machine part to a saw and severing of the female legs from the body.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 6). This provides an allusion to violence, and is designed to produce anger in the viewer. (Lavin, 1993, p. 6). The coins also suggest a commodification of women, perhaps that they can be possessed by men, much like money. This suggestion is heightened by the fact that the coins partially cover the male eye in the middle of the legs. Therefore the images are all linked – the coins, the male eye and the legs. The coins in this position might also represent liberation, as women were, more and more, working and earning money and this is liberating for a woman because she is able to earn her own money and not rely on her mate. It could also suggest the opposite – that men still controlled the purse-strings in the family, especially in the majority of families in which the woman did not work outside the home, and this is a way of controlling and subjugating their wives. Perhaps this is a more accurate interpretation, in light of the fact that the legs were disembodied - a man, by controlling the purse-strings and thereby controlling their wife, makes the woman less than human, as she is totally reliant and dependent on the man. At the bottom of the montage is a gymnast, crouched in a position that resembles a frog. (Lavin, 1993, p. 7). She would be a representation of the new woman, as she has a career and a life outside the home. However, she is partially obscured by an enormous machine part that, in its positioning, really dominates the photograph, as it is just slightly off-center and black. The machine part would symbolize the work that women were doing outside the home, for many of them were working on assembly-line machines. (Lavin, 1993, p.2). That the machine cuts off the gymnast a bit, as it lays into her head, suggests that the more menial jobs of assembly-line work is what a woman can get, and a more professional and artistic aspiration, such as being a gymnast, is being “held-down” by society. The machine part could also symbolize male society and the patriarchal domination that hold down women who aspire to more, as there were presumably still more men than women on the assembly-line machines, and the machine part might also represent the industrial age, therefore represents society. At the same time, the gymnast suggests the new woman, with her short, flapper hair and confident gaze. However, she is flanked by a portrait of the traditional woman, a nude with a trumpet. This is more of a traditional woman, as she is somebody who is evidently from a different era, before the era of womens liberation - the figure suggests a woman who was from biblical times. Perhaps an angel. Two other women represent the new women, with the new womans trademark short hair-style. One is shown in profile at the bottom right, her head partially cut off. The other is in a ball gown and a dunce cap. Juxtaposed with these women were symbols of modernity – skyscrapers, a boxing match and the machine part. This is emblematic of the conflict that the new women faced. While the signs of modernity are meant to evoke a sense of optimism for the “utopian potential of modern life,” (Lavin, 1993, p. 8), the dunce cap on the one woman, a dunce cap that partially obscures her face, and the fact that the other womans head is partially cut off, show the conflict. The dunce cap on the women suggests that women were still regarded as not as intelligent or competent as a man, and the cut off part of the other womans head denotes that women are still “less-than.” The overall work suggests a juxtaposition between anger, fear, alienation and hope. The disembodied woman suggests violence, as does the fact that two of the other women have their heads partially cut off. The boxing match also suggests violence, as boxing is a very violent sport. At the same time, there are skyscrapers, flowers and a maiden with a trumpet that might be triumphantly announcing a dawn of a new age. The linkage of images of anger, fear and alienation with hope “might offer the female viewer a deeply felt motivation for change.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 9). The montage suggests that a woman might come up against obstacles in trying to break free from the molds put to her through society, one of these obstacles being sexism, but that better days are ahead if she proceeds through. At once optimistic and realistic, the montage described the feelings of the new woman. However, when seen through the perspective of another of Hochs work, Man and Machine II, a 1921 painting that depicts a “soulless mechanized world,” the Dada-Ernst piece takes on new significance. This painting shows a face superimposed over a metal pipe, the face both morose and serious. A hand juts out of the face, attached to a curly-cue wire, much like an old telephone wire. The hand performs the job of doing the assembly-line work. (Umland, Sudhalter & Gerson, 2008, p. 193). This shows that Hoch saw assembly line work as rather soulless, and that the mechanical age is just as soulless. This perspective sheds new light on the Dada-Ernst piece, as one of the focal points of the montage was the machinery piece. This interpretation of Dada-Ernst is that modern society is soulless, thus taking away the optimistic feeling that the depictions of modernity in the montage previously may connote. Schnitt mit dem Kuchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands This is a montage that shows “a cross-section of German culture circa 1920.” (Dickerman, 2005, p. 107). In particular, there were many feminist elements in this montage. “In this allegory, Hoch assigns women a catalytic role in the opposition between a revolutionary Dada world associated with Karl Marx and the anti-Dada world of the politically compromised President Friedrich Ebert.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 19). In other words, the women in this piece act as catalysts, propelling society forth from the past, associated with President Ebert and the future, associated with Karl Marx and Dada. In this piece, Hoch used famous and other women who were easily recognized by society to depict various stages and mechanism of liberation – movement, female pleasure, innovation, technology and revolution.(Lavin, 1993, p. 19). For instance, the upper right quadrant is dedicated to forces that are anti-Dada. This quadrant is dominated by a montage of Wilhelm II, the recently deposed leader of Germany. On his right shoulder perches the body of Sent Mahesa, an exotic modern dancer who has been disembodied, her head replaced by General Field Marshal Friedrich von Hindenburg. This is not the only female body that has the heads of men – George Grosz and Wilhelm Herzfelde are attached to a ballerina body. Other female images in the montage are Niddy Impekoven, a popular dancer; Asta Nielsen, an actress; another popular dancer, Pola Negri; and Hannah Hoch herself. Hochs head is abutting a map of Europe, which shows “the progress of womens enfranchisement.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 22). The dancer Impekoven is the “anti-thesis of male, militaristic culture, typified by Wilhelm and his generals.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 23). Moreover, the other women are positioned in such a way that denotes a strong and positive association with “Dada and the new.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 22). The Dada dancer is the key role in this piece, and she symbolizes power and the female, and is one that Hoch assumes for herself. (Lavin, 1993, p. 23). Other pictures of women assume the roles of dancers and ice skating, and Impekovens body “literally has the pivotal position in the work.” (Lavin, 1993, p. 23). These dancers and ice skaters represent freedom and anti-repression, a key Dada concept. The women in this work represent the Weimar hierarchy as a regime that was in disarray and dissolving, and the women in the montages show the utopia and light within this decaying regime, while also representing the female liberation movement (Lavin, 1993, p. 23). Fremde Schonheit This montage is a deconstruction of feminine beauty. This shows a naked woman, lying on her side with her hands behind her head. The body of this woman is perfect, in proportion and hue, with creamy white skin and perfectly round breasts. However, instead of a female head, there is a grotesque shrunken head on the body. (Sawelson-Gorse, 1998, p. 339). According to art historian Annegret Jurgens-Kirchhoff, this portrait is a commentary on how arbitrary beauty is. “By rendering beauty strange...Hoch revealed the representation of beauty as a cultural formula rather than natural given.” (Sawelson-Gorse, 1998, p. 340). In other words, society has a certain standard of beauty, but this is not necessarily the natural standard of beauty – beauty is what society and culture say that it is. It might be beautiful in todays society to have a tan, as this somehow denotes health and vigor. However, in cultures and societies past, a tan was not a beautiful thing at all. It was deemed ugly, as it was the sign of a person who was working class, working out in the field. By deconstructing beauty in this way, Hoch made this point – that both beauty and ugly are arbitrary and defined by culture. This montage is an example of Hochs pairing of beauty with ugly, femininity with the grotesque, to blur the similarities and differences between the two concepts. (Sawelson-Gorse, 1998, p. 340). This montage is vaguely reminiscent of the classic Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder,” in which a woman is under bandages after an operation to make her look more normal and less hideous. While the viewer anticipates a grotesque woman underneath the bandages, this is not what happens. The woman beneath the bandages is a beautiful young blonde woman, physically perfect by contemporary Western standards, while the people to whom she aspires to resemble are strange, pig-like creatures. (The Twilight Zone, 1960). This is a similar concept to Fremde Schonheit – the nature of beauty and grotesqueness is arbitrary and open to interpretation, it just depends upon the eye of the beholder. The grotesque would be beautiful in a different context and the beautiful would be grotesque in an alternate reality. In this way, Fremde Schonheit deconstructs feminine beauty, and makes a comment on societys over-reliance on, and fascination with, female beauty. This is a feminist concept, in a woman should be known for more than her beauty, she should be known for her mind and her accomplishments, and by showing the arbitrariness of beauty this belief is highlighted. At the same time, Hoch cautions women to not rely upon their beauty, precisely because of the arbitrariness of the same. Indische Tanzerin: Aus einem ethnographischen Museum This montage shows the conflict between the modern woman and the traditional woman and society. The womans face and hair are representative of the modern woman, with the short, bobbed hairstyle and gamine-like face. At the same time, there are symbolisms of the traditional role that women have taken on, in that she has a headdress on made up of silverware and there is a sculpture that obscures half of her face. This sculpture seems heavy, therefore symbolizes the oppression that modern women feel. The headdress, with the silverware, symbolizes the housewife. Therefore, the woman is modern and wants to break free from her traditional roles, yet seems not to be able to, as shown by the sculpture that obscures her identity and face and the headdress that denotes the drudgery of being a housewife. The woman has a pained expression on her face, as if she feels hopeless in her situation, which would be a realistic interpretation as the modern woman no doubt felt the pressure to be more traditional, pressure that is put upon her by the male-dominated society. CONCLUSION The Dadaist movement was male-dominated. The men of the Dadaist movement did not easily acknowledge the female artists in their midst, even when the Dadaist women were connected to them by either blood relation or by marriage. Despite this seeming misogyny in the movement, some females did blossom in the movement and used the art medium to both protest the oppression that modern women felt as the feminist movement was still taking hold, as well as show these same women an optimistic future. This exemplified the feminist messages inherent in the art of Hannah Hoch. Hoch, who had two abortions and was active in the movement to legalize abortion, used photomontages to protest the illegality of abortion. She also used the medium to give hope to women by showing a utopian scene of modernity that would encourage these women that the modern woman would soon be accepted by society, yet undercut this optimism with bleak scenes of alienation, oppression and violence. She also deconstructed beauty by juxtaposing scenes of beauty with grotesqueness, thus showing the arbitrariness of beauty and blur the distinction between beauty and the grotesque. In this way, Hoch showed that women should not be judged on their beauty, but by their other assets, as their beauty is literally in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps she also warns women not to rely on their beauty for this same reason. And, in her very complex montage Schnitt mit dem Kuchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands, she uses the images of women to symbolise many feminists concerns and concepts. These are just some of the works by Hoch that represent feminist views. Therefore, Hoch would be considered to be a feminist Dada artist, despite the obvious repression. Sources Used Dickerman, Leah. Dada. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2006. Hemus, Ruth. Dadas Women. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Jones, Amelia. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. Lavin, Maud. Cut With the Kitchen Knife: the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoch. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. The Twilight Zone. Season 2, Episode 6, first broadcast 11 November 1960. Directed by Douglas Heyes. Sawelson-Gorse, Naomi. Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998. Umland, Anne and Adrian Sudhalter. Dada in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art. New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 2008. Read More